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Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Hello, Tech Support?

This is a picture of my keyboard and the two mice (mouses?) that I switch between using.

The mouse on the left came with the computer and works fine, but its short cord easily gets tangled on the corner of the mousepad. (In the interest of full disclosure, I removed the mousepad before taking this photo, after suddenly realizing it's dirty to the point of being disgusting.)

One day Kim heard me muttering under my breath at the mouse, and the next day she brought me a wireless mouse she wasn't using. That's the streamlined little "rodent" on the right in the photo. The wireless one aggravates me, too. I can't seem to remember to turn it off, so it eats batteries.

None of this has been a really big deal until one day last week when the corded mouse fell off the back of the keyboard tray and hung there for a minute, after which it didn't want to work anymore. (It has since miraculously recovered.) I did everything to it I could think to do in the course of about a minute, then switched to the wireless mouse.

The batteries were dead.

I changed the batteries and tried again. Kim had told me more than once that it takes a moment for the computer to recognize the wireless mouse, so I waited until the mouse pointer appeared on the screen, then I was ready to get back to business. Except I couldn't.

The mouse pointer was at the very top left of the screen, and when I pulled back on the mouse to try to put the pointer on my text, the pointer stayed at the top left of the screen. I made repeated backward motions with the mouse, and the harder I pulled back, the more the pointer bounced and clung to its position. It was as if the little arrow-thingy was fighting me.

I was already frustrated, and then things got even crazier. As I set the mouse back on the pad, it slid slightly forward. The pointer fell to the center of the screen. Hm. Progress, I thought. I pushed again, and it fell lower. I moved the mouse to the right, and the pointer moved to the left. I zigzagged the mouse back and forth, and whichever way I moved it, up, down, right or left, the pointer moved in the opposite direction. It was bizarre!

A seed of an idea popped into my mind. No, I thought, it couldn't be that simple. I took my hand off the mouse and took a good, hard look at it. You see that little medium-grey apple near the bottom of the mouse? When I looked closely at the mouse that day, that little apple was upside down near the top of it.

Maybe I should stick with the corded one.

Someone told me once, "You're book smart, but you have no common sense." I feel highly indignant when I remember that remark, but I have to wonder if there isn't some truth to it.

One of those "now, don't I feel stupid" moments! Had my share of those.

I have a wireless mouse but it has a wheel, so I know which end is up. ;-) I love it-I used to hate the mouse with the wire because I'd keep pulling on the cord to give me more maneuverability and it got so I was almost pulling the cord out of the computer with my frustrated yanking. My wireless mouse doesn't have an off switch but the batteries last a long time.

About Me

My Other Blogs

On the Internet to Find the Others

"Admit it. You aren't like them. You're not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the 'normal people' as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like 'Have a nice day' and 'Weather's awful today, eh?', you yearn inside to say forbidden things like 'Tell me something that makes you cry' or 'What do you think deja vu is for?' Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others..."

--Timothy Leary

My Babies

Levi

Gimpy

Kadi: Jun 1997-Mar 2011

Butch: Mar 1998-Feb 2012

The Introvert

She cared for those trinkets as if they were cherished heirlooms, rarely displaying them in public. She stored them in protective velvet sacks, drawing them out only when she was alone or in the company of those she trusted to understand why the simple objects mattered. And as careful as she was to protect the trinkets, so she was cautious about sharing her words, and for the same reasons.